* This photo is of Molasses Creek, along the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It says summer to me and rest.
Plant an English Ivy patch around a big ole oak tree we have on the right side of our house. Our house has four enormous oak trees around it- one on each side- but this particular oak tree is a little island patch of soil that can’t grow much because the oak tree’s roots are massive and it’s fairly shaded. I’m thinking ivy might work there so that it is not just a sad island of acorns, oak leaves, and ragweed. I bought BF a little herd of recycled art yard animals and I think they’ll reside in this ivy patch to give it some whimsy.
Clean out and organize my office. My files are busting at the seams. I am a paper hoarder– no surprise, I guess, for a writer since what I am really hoarding are the words on the paper. But I don’t want my office to be all file cabinets so I’ve got to prune and recycle.
Clean out our attic. BF and I are light on clutter. Neither of us are really that into things and we aren’t all that sentimental about stuff (as opposed to relationships or people where we are sentimental). Still, when we moved to the little cottage a couple years ago there were things we couldn’t bare to get rid of yet and they are up in the attic. For example, I just couldn’t get rid of any of my lesson plans from teaching high school history— something I know I am not going to do again (and if I do, would I really need my overhead projection sheets?). This summer, I am going up there and battling the boxes. Here’s hoping that my lesson plans on the Stamp Act see their way to a recycling bin. Now, my notes from high school (and by notes I mean the ones that you passed to one another in the hallway between classes) may have to live on for a few more years.
Book work. Oh, I have all sorts of book work brewing (in my head). I have a book proposal that I am beside myself to write and I’d like to find a home for it. I also have a good portion of it already organized on notecards and then in chapter order, but I’d like to finish organizing those notes and get started writing. I have another book idea filling up my mind and it needs to find its way into a book proposal so that’s another big To Do. Finally, I started a novel with NaNoWriMo last year, and I’d like to play with it some more. Even if it never sees the light of day, it will be satisfying to me and my creativity to write.
Read a whole lot. One of my birthday list goals is to read 34 books by my birthday in November. I am on # 10. I want this summer to be a power reading summer– both because I miss reading for pleasure and because it fills my creative well.
Watch a whole lot of television that I’ve missed. We didn’t have HBO at the height of the Sex and the City craze so I am planning on knocking out that box set as well as West Wing, The Office, Scrubs, and Seinfeld.
